Pakistanis jailed at home with no charges
HUSSAINABAD, Pakistan (AP) – More than three dozen Pakistanis who were freed from an American prison at Guantanamo Bay remain jailed in their home country, most without charge and with no sign of when they might be released, security and government officials say. The prisoners – including 32 men released from U.S. custody in September 2004 and seven freed in the past six weeks – staged a protest earlier this month seeking an end to their legal limbo, shunning food and shouting slogans at jail staff, a senior prison official said.
There was apparently no violence, but the official told The Associated Press it “took hours to get them to calm down” inside their high-security cells in Adiala jail, near the capital Islamabad. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, a senior Interior Ministry official, confirmed that about three dozen former Guantanamo prisoners are being held at the jail, but would not say how long they had been there or discuss when they might be released. He said the men were being “debriefed.”
Hundreds of Pakistanis, mostly Islamic seminary students, went to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban after the United States began military operations in October 2001 in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Some 180 Pakistanis freed from Afghan jails are also held at Adiala.
“They are under protective custody. Their cases are periodically reviewed, and any decision about their release will be taken by the provincial authorities,” Cheema told the AP. The government could hold such men for an unspecified time, he added.
In Hussainabad, a clutch of mud-brick homes 185 miles south of the capital, the family of one of the prisoners said Tuesday it is desperate to see him freed, and argues the U.S. decision to let him leave Guantanamo is evidence he’s not a dangerous terrorist.
Ghulam Farid – brother-in-law of prisoner Bashir Ahmad – said the family’s joy at learning of his release from Guantanamo has turned to frustration.
“I have no idea why the government won’t release him. There can be no good reason,” he said. “We are poor people. We can’t get any answers from our government. We are helpless.”
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico said 29 Pakistani prisoners were transferred home in September for continued detention, while six were released outright. It wasn’t clear why the Pentagon figures differed from those provided by the Pakistani authorities.
Plexico said the United States seeks assurances from countries that prisoners who are released or transferred will be treated humanely, but, “We have no authority to tell another government what they are going to do with a detainee.”
The U.S. military has released at least 211 detainees from Guantanamo, but many – including dozens of prisoners sent to the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – are freed on the condition they will be held by their home countries.
Bashir Ahmad was 17 years old in 2000 when he closed his video rental shop and went off to fight, his mother Jannat Bibi said. A friend of Ahmad’s said he was motivated by a local religious leader from the banned Sunni militant group Sipah-e-Sahaba, which is headquartered just a few miles away in the city of Jhang, a hotbed of militancy.
Ahmad told his family he was going to fight in Kashmir, but they heard nothing from him until getting a letter in 2002 saying he was in jail in Afghanistan. A second letter arrived later from the Red Cross saying he was at Guantanamo.
Two weeks ago, Red Cross officials came to tell the family that Ahmad had been returned to Pakistan, but said they had no power to get him out of jail or arrange a visit.
“I was so happy to know that he was at least back in his own land, but now I want to see him released. I want him back today, at this very instant,” said his mother. “If he is no longer wanted (by the Americans) why should they keep him in jail?”
Bibi said the years of uncertainty over her son have taken a heavy toll on the family, economically and emotionally. An extended family of eight lives hand to mouth off the $25 a month Ghulam Farid earns as a day laborer.
“Nobody can imagine what has happened to me, nor can anybody read my heart. I still run to the front door whenever I hear some sound, hoping it might be him. Sometimes I wake up dreaming he has come home,” she said. “I swear to God I live only for the return of my son.”
The Guantanamo returnees are being held under a tough anti-terrorism law pushed through by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that gives the government the right to detain suspects without charge for up to a year. At least three other returnees have been released in the past six months, but human rights officials say the government should free all the men.
“There is no reason for them to be kept in prison,” said I.A. Rehman, head of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission. “We have challenged this policy several times, but in Pakistan the opinion of the police has more weight than that of human rights activists.”
Officials say privately that the government has reason for caution.
One former detainee, Abdullah Mehsud, returned to Pakistan from Guantanamo only to take up arms again, and is suspected of masterminding the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers last year. At least three freed Guantanamo detainees have taken up arms again in Afghanistan, and others have expressed a desire to fight in Iraq and Chechnya.
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Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad in Lahore and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, Pakistan contributed to this report.